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If you copy, it means you’re working without any real feeling. No two people on earth are alike, and it’s got to be that way in music or it isn’t music.

Billie Holiday

I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That’s all I know.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Change Hate Music Myself Sing
There’s no damn business like show business – you have to smile to keep from throwing up.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Business Smile Throw Yourself
The only reason they’re out there is to see me fall into the damn orchestra pit.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Fall Myself Reason See
Singing songs like ‘The Man I Love’ or ‘Porgy’ is no more work than sitting down and eating Chinese roast duck, and I love roast duck.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Love Myself Sing Work
Don’t be in such a hurry.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Hurry One Liner Patience Time
You’ve got to have something to eat and a little love in your life before you can hold still for any damn body’s sermon on how to behave.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Body Eat Life Love Yourself
When you sing, always tell the truth.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Sing Truth Yourself
Lust may be in the heart, though it be not seen by others; as guests may be in the house, though they look not out at the windows.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Heart Home Lust Window
The whole basis of my singing is feeling. Unless I feel something, I can’t sing.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Basis Feeling Myself Singing
New Orleans is the only city in the world you go in to buy a pair of nylon stockings they want to know your head size.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Clothes Weird World Yourself
Love is like a faucet, it turns off and on.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Emotion Feeling Love
Mom and Pop were just a couple of kids when they got married. He was eighteen, she was sixteen and I was three.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Marriage Myself Parents Young
I don’t think I’m singing. I feel like I’m playing a horn, What comes out is what I feel.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Feeling Horn Myself Sing Thinking
If you think dope is for kicks and for thrills, you’re out of your mind. There are more kicks to be had in a good case of paralytic polio or by living in an iron lung.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Goodness Mindset Thinking Yourself
People don’t understand the kind of fight it takes to record what you want to record the way you want to record it.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Fight Kind People Record Understand Yourself
I can’t stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession. If you can, then it ain’t music, it’s close order drill, or exercise or yodeling or something, not music.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Exercise Myself Night Sing Stand
I’m always making a comeback but nobody ever tells me where I’ve been.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Myself Return
You can be up to your boobies in white satin, with gardenias in your hair and no sugar cane for miles, but you can still be working on a plantation.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Appearance Hairs Plantation Yourself
And when you’re poor, you grow up fast.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Fast Growth Poor Yourself
In this country kings or dukes don’t amount to nothing. The greatest man around then was Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he was the President; so I started calling Lester the President. It got shortened to Pres.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Country Greatness Myself Short Start
I can only sing songs my way. I don’t know any other way.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Known Myself Sing Song Way
I try to improvise like Les Young, Louis Armstrong or someone else I admire. What comes out is what I feel.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Feeling Improvisation Myself
The difficult I’ll do right now. The impossible will take a little while.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Difficult Impossible Inspirational Myself Right
God bless the child that’s got his own.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Blessing Children God Independent
I never hurt nobody but myself and that’s nobody’s business but my own.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Business Hurt Myself
All dope can do for you is kill you… the long hard way. And it can kill the people you love right along with you.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Hard Kill Love Yourself
If I don’t have friends, then I ain’t nothing.
BILLIE HOLIDAY

Friendship Myself

If you copy, it means you’re working without any real feeling. No two people on earth are alike, and it’s got to be that way in music or it isn’t music.

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If you copy, it means you’re working without any real feeling. No two people on earth are alike, and it’s got to be that way in music or it isn’t music.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Billie Holiday Quotes